Feeling Better and The Three Sees

What a week it was, and Plotnik realizes it now because he woke up this morning feeling like himself again.

That stupid bike accident -- he kept seeing and hearing himself plowing into that car, on a regular basis, like every time he closed his eyes, until maybe yesterday. The reason that all stopped was he walked down to the bike shop to pick up his bike, after getting a new front wheel put on and having the bent places un-bent. He showed the repair guy his helmet, to determine whether or not he should buy a new one.

"Christ!" the guy said. "You must have been going really fast and hit something hard!"

Plot looked closer at the helmet. There was a crack running down the middle of the helmet, all the way from top to bottom, on the inside, and on the outside, right next to that interior crack, the plastic shell was shattered.

Somehow that makes it all better. The helmet worked. Plotnik heard the pavement hit his helmet but didn't really feel it. Now he realizes how hard he hit and what would have happened to him if he hadn't been wearing it.

Or if he had hit somewhere else on his head, or was going a lot faster and hit a lot harder. He has been thinking a lot about Ralphie this week.

So he bought a new helmet, the same exact one, rode the bike home, finding himself stopping a little quicker at traffic lights.

His shoulder stopped aching this morning, finally, and that nasty little red racetrack on his arm has stopped oozing. Plus, he's out of Stiletto City.

Every time he comes home from visiting down there, he coughs and his eyes run for several days, and he feels vaguely exhausted. Maybe it's working at the computers for two long days in a row, or maybe it's the foul air or the cigarette smoke or all the cookies. Who knows what it is? It just is.

And last night he and Duck saw a beautiful Word 4 Word performance, this time it was two short stories from Olive Kittredge. Word 4 Word is probably Plotnik's very favorite theater experience, every time they do a show.

Afterwards there was a party at the theater and all the actors from the show and the Word 4 Word co-producers were there. Plot was talking to one of these ladies and he said to her: "How many scripts or screenplays do you see that are real literature? Not many, right? But Word 4 Word chooses the best stories from the best writers and then performs them exactly as written, word for word, using great actors. So you get the best literature and great actors besides. What can be better than this?"

The woman, obviously unaccustomed to hearing such praise, blushed a bit and said "Well, I like to think so."

Plotnik was drinking red wine from a plastic cup. He smiled and poured the wine all over his right shoe.

The Olive Kittredge stories (written by Elizabeth Strout) take place in a small town in Maine. Plot and Duck ran into an old friend there, who happens to have grown up in Maine, though Plot hadn't known that before. The friend had a lady with him who was also from Maine, and she told Plot about what sounded like "The Three Seas." Duck thought she meant "Three C's." Neither. It's "Three Sees."

"It's how Mainers give directions," she said. "You say 'Oh, it's Three Sees from heah. Ya go down that road as far as ya can see. Then ya turn left and go as far as ya can see. Then ya turn right and go as far as ya can see. Then ya're thah."